Mr. Tom O'Brien:

The tax measures and additional charges introduced at the time were all anti-investment and anti-property. Those decisions are bearing fruit in a housing shortage. Many of our members will be slow to return to the private rental market because it is not possible to do so financially on a number of fronts. Tax is one reason, while access to finance remains a problem. Significant deposits are needed to fund buy-to-let property and investments are not self-financing.

They are among the issues that need to be addressed. In particular, the tax code needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. That is not something we prepared for today. We have met Department of Finance officials on a number of occasions and laboured the point about the tax code and the treatment of private investors relative to our peers in the commercial sector in which rent is 100% deductible. If we were to rent a shop, there would be 100% deductibility, whereas when we rent a residential property, the figure is 75%. This results in a situation where one could pay tax on losses as a landlord, which is unprecedented.